To My New Liberal Readers

Just so you know where I'm coming from. I'm not a liberal. I believe in small government, balanced budgets, welfare reform, and a flat tax. I'm against affirmative action and hate crime laws.
Personally, I'm pro-life, although I can live in a society in which legal first trimester abortions are safe, legal and rare. I'm pro-marriage - I just want everyone to have access to the family structure. I was for the Iraq war. I published the Danish cartoons. I wore a Reagan '80 button in an English high school. I'm a Catholic. I would never have voted for the Medicare prescription bill because we simply cannot afford it. In other words: don't get your hopes up. I'm not on the left, whatever the religious right is now saying about me.

One the other hand, I have some new liberal readers who say I have only recently seen the light on Bush. Just for the record, I very reluctantly endorsed Kerry in 2004 because of what I believed was Bush's incompetence and recklessness. So this is not a new or sudden epiphany for me. But the way the Republicans have run this campaign has confirmed my worst fears about them.

If you're an old-style Goldwater conservative, I think you'll have little choice but to kick the current GOP in the posterior next Tuesday.

If you want to read a conservative critique of the current shambles in Washington, check out my new book. It says much more than I can say on the blog. So far, many, many liberals who have read the book are emailing me to say they don't agree with all of it, but find it refreshing to read a case for principled old-style conservatism. It helped them figure out why they were liberals. So give it a chance. You can get it online here.

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